When author Chloe Hooper takes her seat at the din ner
table of Elizabeth Doomadgee, whose brother died in police
custody, she notes that her hostess prays "for my ears,
so that I would not miss any important details."

Most of the older woman's prayers will go unanswered,
but she receives at least this mite of grace: Hooper's
ears and eyes miss few details, and she deploys them with
devastating skill in "Tall Man: The Death of
Doomadgee."

Hooper, a white, suburban Australian whose first novel was
shortlisted for the Orange Prize, begins this beautifully
written book as she meets her first Aborigine. Soon she is
caught up in a whole tumultuous community on Palm Island in
Australia's wild northeast.

Hooper arrives three months after Cameron Doomadgee's
2004 death in the island jail, some 40 minutes after
detective Chris Hurley arrested him for swearing. The
Aborigine man punched Hurley, and the pair tumbled inside
the jail. An autopsy showed Doomadgee died of a blow to his
abdomen so severe it tore his liver nearly in half.

The autopsy report precipitated a riot - the jail and
Hurley's home were burned down. The resulting two-year
legal case made visible the tensions between the indigenous
peoples and the white authorities who run schools, hospitals
and every other important institution on the island.

From 1918 to 1960, whites removed members of more than 40
Aboriginal tribes to Palm Island, focusing especially on
those deemed troublesome - a category broad enough to
include those who persisted in traditional ceremonies.
Children were wrenched from their parents and packed into
dormitories, where they were converted to Christianity and
harshly supervised.

Victims, yes, but when Hooper arrives in 2005, she also finds people heartbreakingly prone to victimizing each other. Alcoholism is rampant and unemployment stands at 92 percent. A chronic undertow of violence now seems to stri ke residents as a dismal force of nature. Hooper picks this up in even the most banal of conversations....

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